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von Hutten.' The host replied, 'You are not he, but Martin Luther.' He laughed, and said jocosely, 'They hold me to be Hutten, and you say I am Luther; I shall next be Marcolfus,' [a notorious character in the monkish legends]. Afterward he took up a large beer glass, and said, 'Swiss, now drink me a health;' and then arose, threw around him his mantle, and, giving us his hand, took leave of us, saying, 'When you come to Wittenberg. greet Dr. Jerome Schurf for me.' 'Very gladly,' said we; 'but whom shall we call you, that he may understand us?' He replied, 'Say only this, he who is to come, sendeth you greeting,' and he will understand it. . . . On Saturday, we went to the house of Schurf to present our letters; and when we were conducted into the room, behold we found Martin there as at Jena, and with him Melancthon, Justus Jonas, Nicholas Amsdorf, and Dr. Augustine Schurf rehearsing to him what had taken place at Wittenberg during his absence. He greeted us, and smiling said, 'This is Philip Melancthon, of whom we spoke.' Melancthon turned to us and asked us many questions, to which we replied as well as we could. So we spent the day with them with great delight and gratification on our part.

In 1525 (June 13), Luther was married to Catharine von Borahe at the age of 42, and she of 26. The marriage was highly offensive to the generally received opinions of the age-both having taken the vows of celibacy, but was a natural sequence of the views which they now held of Christian and social duty. His sympathizing friends were invited to dinner, and the city presented Luther several casks of beer, and the university gave a large silver tankard, plated with gold, weighing five pounds and a quarter, which is now in possession of the University of Griefswald. His correspondence shows that his domestic feelings were tender, and his love considerate. He somewhere says, 'I expect more from my Katy and from Melancthon than I do from Christ my Lord, and yet I well know that neither they nor any one on earth hath suffered, or can suffer, what he hath suffered for me.' Molsdorf, a former member of Luther's household, says, 'I remember that Dr. Luther used to say, that he congratulated himself with all his soul that God had given him a modest and prudent wife, who took such excellent care of his health.' 'How I longed after my family,' says Luther, when I lay at the point of death in Smalcald! I thought I should never again see my wife and child. How painful would such a separation have been!'

When Luther was at Coburg, in 1530, he heard of the illness of his father, and yet his own life was in such peril that he could not safely make the journey to see him. At this, both he and Catharine were much distressed. Soon afterwards, the news of his father's death reached him. 'I have heard,' he says to Link, 'of the death of my father, who was so dear and precious to me.' Catharine, to comfort him, sent him a likeness of his favorite daughter Magdalene, then one year old. You have done a good deed,' says Veit Dietrich, Luther's amanuensis, in sending the likeness to the

doctor; for by it many of his gloomy thoughts are dissipated. He hath placed it on the wall over against the dining-table.'

There is a vein of drollery and playfulness in all his letters relating to his domestic life. In one of his letters to his wife he addresses her as my Lord Katy' (meus Dominus, &c.) which furnished pleasant amusement to his university friends and the students, some of whom were generally members of his family. He once gave out a similar phrase in German to a student in his examination to translate into Latin, and the answer contained such a ridiculous blunder that it long continued a by-word. Luther closes one of his letters to an old friend by saying, 'My lord and Moses [the lawgiver] Katy most humbly greeteth you.' He also in a letter to his wife, addressed her as 'My kind and dear lord and master Katy Lutheress [Lutherinn], doctress and priestess at Wittenberg.'

If we wish to see his creed in respect to a wife's place in a household, we have it undoubtedly in these words, addressed once to his Katy, as he was fond of calling her: 'You may persuade me to any thing you wish; you have perfect control;' to which was added, by way of explanation, in household affairs I give you the entire control, my authority being unabated.'

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The following letter was addressed to his son Johnny (4 years old): Grace and peace in Christ, my darling little son. I am glad to see that you pray and study diligently. Go on doing so, my Jonny, and when I come home I will bring with me some fine things for you. I know of a beautiful, pleasant garden, where many children go, and have little golden coats, and gather from the trees fine apples and pears, and cherries and plums; they sing and play, and are happy; they have beautiful little horses with golden bits and silver saddles. I asked the owner of the garden, whose children these were. He replied, They are children which love to pray and learn, and are good.' I then said, Dear sir, I, too, have a son, whose name is Jonny Luther. May he not also come into the garden, that he too may eat these beautiful apples and pears, and ride on these fine horses, and play with the boys?' The man said, 'If he loves to pray and learn, and is good, he shall come into the garden, and Philly and Jussy [Philip and Justus] too, and when they are all together, they shall have fifes and drums and lutes, and all kinds of music, and dance and shoot with their cross-bows.' And he showed me a fine grass plat in the garden for dancing, and there were hanging nothing but golden fifes and drums and fine silver cross-bows. But it was early, and the children had not yet dined; and as I could not wait for their dancing, I said to the man, 'O, my dear sir, I will hasten away, and write all about this to my dear little Jonny, that he may pray and learn diligently, and be good, and then come into this garden. He has an aunt Lene [Magdalene], and she must come too.' The man said, "That is right, go and write to him so.' Therefore, my dear little Jonny, learn and pray well, and tell Philip [Melancthon's son], and Jussy [Justus Jonas's son], to learn and pray too, and then you may all come together into the garden. And now I commend you to God. Greet aunt Lene and give her a kiss for me.

Luther died at Eisleben, Feb. 18, 1546, at the age of 62 years, 3 months and 8 days, and his body was deposited in the church in Wittenberg, after funeral addresses by Bugenhagen and Melancthon.

RAMUS AND HIS EDUCATIONAL LABORS.

MEMOIR.

PETER RAMUS (Pierre la Ramee), whose life and labors present a summary view of the educational condition and reforms of the sixteenth century in France, was born in 1515, in an obscure village in Vermandois. His was descended from a noble family in Liege, which was driven away from Burgundy in the troubled reign of Charles the Bold. His grandfather was reduced to great poverty, and to manual labor, as was also his father, and when a boy, the future teacher and author was a pig-watcher. But in this stern school of poverty and early labor he acquired that resolute purpose which overcame ordinary weaknesses and defied the most formidable hindrances. On the death of his father, when quite a lad, he hurried to Paris, where he was kindly received by an uncle, a carpenter by trade, who gave him shelter, purchased a few books, and sympathized in his purpose to become a scholar. When these slender resources failed, he entered the domestic service of a master regent, who lived in the College of Navarre, one of the most renowned institutions of the University. By day he performed such labors as were assigned, hearing portions of the lectures by stealth, and by night read and meditated on what he had heard. In the course of eight or ten years he worked his way through the long and winding course which led to the degree of master-and at the age of twenty, he defended with such fertile resources of argument and rhetoric his bold thesis-assailing the soundness of the whole Aristotelian philosophy, against all comers, for an entire day, as to obtain his degree amid a storm of applause. To enable him to pay the fees exacted by the University, his mother and uncle united their slender means—the former parting with articles of house-keeping, and the latter alienating a portion of his little field for this purpose-a sacrifice which the poor scholar made every effort immediately to restore, and ever after remembered his family with gratitude. He at once exercised his privilege as master by teaching logic and belles-letters in the College of Mans, and soon afterwards of Ave-Maria, and gathered quite a crowd of listeners.

He extended his readings and criticism to Quintilian aud Cicero, and encouraged free questions and discussions among his hearers. Not content with assailing the substance and method of Aristotelian philosophy, orally, he resorted to the press, and published in Latin, his Divisions, or Didactic Institutions, and Remarks on Aristotle. The debate, with his adversaries, was soon adjourned from the forum of scholars and professors to the domain of the courts, and finally to the highest tribunal of the realm, where Francis I., King of France, the Founder of the Royal College, whose mission it was to welcome new studies, promulgated the following decree :

FRANCIS, by the grace of God, King of France, to all who will see this present, Greeting. Whereas, there is slight warning of the trouble occurring to our dear and well beloved daughter, the University of Paris, because of two books made by Master Pierre Ramus, intitled, Dialecticae Institutiones, and the other Aristotelia animadversiones, and of the suit and differences arising, etc.—we have contemned, suppressed and abolished, we do contemn, suppress and abolish the said books, and have made and do make prohibitions and warnings to all printers and booksellers of our Kingdom, fiefs, domains, and seigniories, and to all other subjects of whatever condition and estate they be, that they neither sell, retail, etc., under pain of confiscation or corporal punishment; and likewise to the said Ramus to read (no more to teach) his said books, nor to have them written, or copied, or published, or spread abroad in any manner, nor to read in dialectics or philosopy, in any way whatever, without our express permission, and also to use no longer such slanders and invectives against ARISTOTLE and other ancient authors received and approved, against our said daughter, the University, and suffered by the same, under penalties above mentioned. So we, give commandment to our provost of Paris, preserver of the privileges of said University, that he may cause the present ordinance and judgment to be executed, etc. In testimony of this, we have affixed our seal to this present. Given at Paris, March 2, year of Grace 1543. By the King, you, the Chancellor of Chesnage, being present.

Ramus was silenced-but found a friend and patron in Cardinal of Lorraine, who had been a fellow student of his at Navarre, and who on the death of Francis I. obtained in 1547 from his successor, a revocation of the literary interdict. In the meantime he taught mathematics, and in 1544 published a Latin version of Euclid, and made this branch one of the most popular in Paris. In this year he was invited by the principal of the College of Presles to lecture on Eloquence, where his fervid utterances restored the attendance of pupils, which had been greatly reduced by the plague. In the following year he was made principal of the institution, which post he held to the end of his life, and for the most of his time, after 1551, he was professor of eloquence and philosophy in the college of France. In all the educational discussions of his time, touching grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, philosophy, mathematics, the French, Latin, and Greek languages, he not only spoke in his lecture-room, but published his different treatises amounting to upwards of fifty-many of which passed through several editions. His criti

cisms on the studies and administration of the university, subjected him to bitter attacks from the regents, and his adoption of the reformatory doctrines, involved him in the religious persecutions of the day, and he died one of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, on the 26th of August, 1572.

Simple in his personal habits, he slept on straw, rose with the dawn, and worked all day in his study and lecture room. After setting apart enough to meet his own frugal expenses, he shared with the members of his family, and with poor scholars, the moiety of his earnings, and the other portion he consecrated to the endowment of the chair of mathematics in the College of France, the occupant of which was to be named in convocation, and to hold the position for only three years, without formal re-election.

EDUCATIONAL WORK.

The influence of Ramus on educational progess was felt (1,) in his persistent opposition to Aristotelian scholasticism which then ruled the University; (2,) in his efforts to renovate the organization and administration of higher studies; and (3,) his sagacious simplification of text-books and methods of instruction.

1. He was eminently successful in recognizing the value of other studies and authors than those of the Aristotelian philosophy, and by the fire of his own eloquence he illustrated the fervid genius of Demosthenes, and the finished rhetoric of Cicero, to whose works he introduced his students.

2. His Avertissement sur la reforme de l'universite de Paris, at once exposes the abuses which had overgrown the university organization, and points out the remedy. Having felt the sting of poverty, and the hardship which the fees exacted of all candidates for degrees imposed on the indigent [that of a licentiate being fifty-six livres; of a doctorate of medicine, eight hundred and eighty-one livres; and of theology, one thousand], he says to the king: "Put a stop to such impositions, which bars the course of philosophy, theology and medicine, to honest, worthy, and talented poverty; redeem the number of able masters; pay the most deserving from the coffers of the State, and make their lectures free-or else let the remuneration of all the lectures be drawn from the monastic endowments which are now practically wasted. In the faculty of Arts establish chairs of mathematics and physics; in the juridical faculty, a chair of civil law; in the medical faculty, chairs of Botany, Anatomy, Pharmacy, and practical Chimie, under the eyes of their professors, in the style of Hippocrates and Galen; in the the

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